Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson

Analysis of Major Characters

Chapters I–III

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.

The Search for Heroic Role Models

Treasure Island is an adventure tale,
but it is also the story of one boy’s coming of age. At the outset
of the novel, Jim is a timid child, but by the end he has matured
incredibly. He has outwitted pirates, taken over a ship, and saved
innumerable lives. Jim has become an adult in character if not in
age. Like any maturing boy, Jim must try out various male role models.
Jim’s father does not appear to be a significant role model: he
passes away early in the novel, and even before that he does not
seem to have much effect on Jim’s inner life. In fact, Jim scarcely
mentions his father in his narrative.

Alternatively, we might expect a local authority figure
to act as role model for Jim. Dr. Livesey, for example, has high
social status in the community and represents the civilized, rational
world. When Jim finds the map, he immediately thinks of Livesey
when wondering what he should do with it. It therefore initially
seems that Jim looks up to Livesey as a role model. Squire Trelawney,
like the doctor, is another symbol of worldly authority. However,
while both men are upstanding citizens, they do not captivate Jim’s
mind or inspire him. They are simply too staid and predictably upstanding.

When the pirates appear, however, Jim begins
to pay close attention to their actions, attitudes, and appearance.
He describes Silver with an intensity and attention to detail that
he does not show for any other character. Soon, Jim is imitating some
aspects of Silver’s behavior. He acts impulsively and bravely when
he sneaks into the pirates’ boat in Chapter XIII. He even deserts
his own captain in Chapter XXII, effectively enacting his own mutiny.
He sails a pirate’s boat out to the anchored ship, kills the pirate
Israel Hands, and names himself the new captain of the ship. The
pirate side of Jim is so apparent that Silver himself remarks that
Jim reminds him of what he was like as a boy, hinting that Jim could
grow up to be like Silver.

At the end of the novel, the pirates’ influence on Jim’s
development is clear, and not necessarily detrimental. Jim displays
more courage, charisma, and independence than the captain, squire,
or doctor. Just as he has not mentioned his father, he does not
mention these men at the close of his narrative, an omission that
suggests that they have not been important to his development. Instead,
Jim pays a touching tribute to Silver and wishes the pirate well.
Indeed, Silver has been more instrumental than anyone else in shaping
Jim’s identity, hopes, and dreams.

The Futility of Desire

Treasure Island explores the satisfaction
of desires, and, indeed, the motivation of all the characters is
greed: everyone wants the treasure. By the end of the adventure,
Jim and the captain’s crew have sated their greed, having won the
treasure. Stevenson vividly describes how the men haul the gold
bars to the ship, as if to underscore the final satisfying achievement.
But Stevenson also casts doubt on the possibility of ultimate satisfaction.
For the pirates, desire proves futile and goals unattainable, as
the treasure map leads them to an empty hole. The empty hole becomes
a symbol for the futility of the treasure hunt and for the loss
of one’s soul in searching for the treasure. When the pirates dig
in the ground, it is as if they are digging their own grave. Their
greed and irrationality lead only to death, loss, and dissatisfaction.

Similarly, though Ben has possessed the treasure for
three months, he is half mad and living in a cave. Such treasure
is useless to him if he is alone on an island. Without the structure
and rules of a society that places monetary value on gold, the treasure
is worthless. Likewise, we see that Jim himself is not satisfied
by the gold. He does not mention its value and focuses instead on
the coins’ nationality and their design. He does not refer to his
share of the windfall or to what happens to the treasure when he
gets back home. The gold coins elicit nightmares, not dreams of
his riches. Jim displays no desire to return for the remaining silver
treasure left behind. Unlike other literary adventurers
such as Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain’s The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn or Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, Jim
does not want to travel or treasure-hunt endlessly. He has learned
that the desires associated with such lifestyles are futile—he will
never attain a good life through greed and bloodshed.

The Lack of Adventure in the Modern Age

Stevenson frames his tale of piracy with a number of devices
that emphasize the end of the story. He suggests that the tale belongs firmly
to the past rather than to the present. Stevenson’s decision to set
the story in the eighteenth century underscores the fact that the pirate
life is outmoded. Stevenson also has Jim begin his narrative in the
form of a retrospective chronicle that begins after the adventure is
already over. We know from the first sentence that Jim, Squire Trelawney,
Smollett, and Livesey have survived as victors. This knowledge lends
a tone of gloom to the pirates’ first appearance, as we know they
are doomed. The pirates die out rapidly over the course of the novel
and are continually associated with death, disease, and disappearance.
Indeed, the pirate’s skeleton found near the treasure site symbolizes
the pirates’ impending doom.

Stevenson, however, does not glorify the death of piracy
and the eradication of criminals. With Jim’s final sad farewell
to the memory of Silver, in which he says that he will go on no
more adventures, Stevenson creates a sort of elegy to the pirate
life. Stevenson does not mourn its loss, but he makes us wonder
whether the world is better off without the pirates’ charisma, charm,
and spirit. He challenges the Victorian idea that captains, doctors,
and other responsible professional men are the natural leaders of
society. Stevenson was critical of stodgy Victorian professionalism
throughout his life, and his somewhat romantic portrait of vanished
pirates forms a sad tribute to what he feels is missing from the
modern world.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Solitude

Despite Jim’s solidarity with Smollett’s crew, teamwork
is not a dominant motif in Treasure Island. Instead,
Stevenson emphasizes Jim’s recurring moments of solitude. Though
Jim does spend time with his family at the beginning of the novel
and is later frequently in the company of the captain’s men and
the pirates’ band, these intervals are punctuated by far more crucial
moments during which Jim is alone. For instance, Jim is alone when
he meets Pew, the pirate who delivers the black spot that sets the
story in motion. He is alone in the apple barrel when he overhears
the critical information about the mutiny that enables him to save
Smollett. He is alone when he meets Ben Gunn in the woods and learns
the directions to the treasure. Jim is also alone when he sails
in the coracle to cut the ship adrift, depriving the pirates of
their means of escape. Throughout the novel, Jim’s instances of
solitude are associated with self-reliance and show his maturity.
This solitude may also have a downside, however. Jim’s decision
to function independently, rather than as part of a larger team,
may be what prompts Smollett to tell him that they will never voyage
together again. Jim may be too individualistic to make a good rank-and-file
sailor.

Animals

Though many works of children’s literature link animals
to childhood, in Treasure Island animals are associated
not with Jim but with the pirates. Jim does not have a pet in the
novel, but Long John Silver has his eerie parrot named Cap’n Flint.
The parrot does not affirm Silver’s humanity, but rather emphasizes
the pirates’ inhumanity, as the bird is witness to two centuries
of heinous pirate crimes. Cap’n Flint’s raucous screeching of other
men’s words echoes the pirates’ constant singing about their greed,
violence, and selfishness. The parrot’s incessant mockery suggests
that the pirates are better at making noise than producing intelligent
statements.

The pirates resemble other animals as well. As they climb
over the stockade fence in Chapter XXI, Stevenson compares them
to monkeys. When Jim first sees the ex-pirate Ben Gunn in Chapter XV,
he likens him to a “creature ... like a deer.” Later, when Jim faces down
his captors in Chapter XXVIII, they all stare at him “like as many
sheep,” suggesting that they are all faceless, submissive members
of a herd. Notably, Stevenson never likens the captain’s group to
any animals, suggesting that the captain’s men are decent human beings
while the pirates are subhuman creatures.

The Color Black

Stevenson also repeatedly associates the color black with
the pirates. The pirate flag, the Jolly Roger, is black, in sharp
contrast with the colorful British flag, the Union Jack. The pirates
also give out black spots, verdicts delivered to their victims.
Significantly, the pirate who discovers Billy in hiding is named
Black Dog. Likewise, the pirate Pew, in his blindness, lives in
a state of unending blackness. When Jim creeps among the sleeping
pirates, he proceeds “where the darkness was thickest,” an image
that likens the pirates to chunks of blackness. Many of Jim’s most
frightening encounters with the pirates, such as his examination
of the dead Billy, his drifting near the pirate camp on the island,
and his accidental entry among the sleeping pirates in the stockade,
occur in the black of the night. Certainly, as the color of funerals
and mourning, black is associated with death, and the pirates leave
a wake of death wherever they travel. Black is also the color of
absence, the total lack of light, enlightenment, and illumination.
The pirates’ lack of light contrasts with the shining, glimmering
gold for which they search—and which they wrongly imagine will brighten
their dark lives.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Coracle

Jim discovers the coracle—the small boat that Ben Gunn
has constructed out of wood and goatskin—at the end of Chapter XXII.
In the chapters that follow, Jim uses the coracle to sail out to
the Hispaniola, cut it adrift, ruin the pirates’ chances of escape,
and climb aboard to kill Israel Hands. The irony of a small boy
using a small boat to overpower a large man in a large ship points
to a David-and-Goliath symbolism in Jim’s adventure. Indeed, Jim
ultimately proves a victorious underdog.

However, the coracle, which belongs to a former pirate,
also symbolizes Jim’s desertion of Captain Smollett. In leaving
his superior to go hunt for the boat, Jim becomes a bit like a pirate
himself. His heroism is not unequivocally good in a moral sense,
which may be why the captain does not wish Jim to accompany him
on any more voyages. Despite Jim’s disloyalty, his adventurous spirit
leads him eventually to save many lives and stop the pirates from
escaping. The coracle therefore also represents the boy’s moral
ambiguity and his pirate apprenticeship.

The Treasure Map

Though the treasure map appears in the novel’s first chapter,
when Jim and his mother ransack Billy Bones’s sea chest, it retains
its fascinating and mysterious aura nearly to the end of the novel.
The map functions as a sort of magic talisman that draws people
into the adventure story. Jim’s possession of the map transforms
him from an ordinary innkeeper’s son to a sailor and a hero, and
changes the stodgy squire and doctor into freewheeling maritime
adventurers.

In addition to symbolizing adventure, however, the map
also symbolizes desire—and the vanity of desire. Everyone wants
the map and seems willing to go to unbelievable ends to attain it.
Ironically, however, Stevenson ultimately shows us that the map
has been useless throughout the whole novel, as Ben Gunn has already
excavated the treasure and moved it elsewhere. The map directs Silver,
its possessor, not to a final happiness but to a significant letdown:
the empty hole where the treasure should be. In this sense, the
map symbolizes the futility of hunting for material satisfaction.

Rum

Rum reappears throughout the novel as a powerful symbol
of the pirates’ recklessness, violence, and uncontrolled behavior.
In Stevenson’s time, people considered rum a crude form of alcohol, the
opposite of the refined and elegant wine that the captain’s men occasionally
drink. The pirates do not engage in light social drinking—when they
indulge in rum, their drunkenness is destructive, as reflected in
the pirate song lyric about the “dead man’s chest.” The first sailor
to drink himself to death is Billy, who keeps drinking though Livesey
warns him it will kill him. Later, Mr. Arrow, the first mate aboard
the Hispaniola, is constantly tipsy until he falls overboard, presumably
to his death. When Jim climbs on board the ship, he finds that in
their rum-induced drunkenness the two watchmen have lost control
of the ship and that one of them has killed the other. Jim is able
to defeat his adult attacker largely because Jim is sober and Israel
Hands is drunk. Rum therefore symbolizes an inability to control
or manage what is one’s own: one’s property, one’s mission, and
one’s very self.